Writing a novel - Day 2
Yesterday I said that I was going to spend this week reading books explicitly about outlining and structure, since I haven’t had much experience actually doing that. The closest I’ve come in the past was using Holly Lisle’s Notecarding technique, which works well for generating scene ideas and for adding a skeleton structure to a novel but doesn’t really get into the fundamentals of craft. Like it or not, successful fiction - successful storytelling, at least in the Western model of fiction that I’ve been raised in and work in - expect stories to hit certain structural beats.
This is what James Scott Bell’s Super Structure covers. Much like his older book Plot & Structure it’s largely concerned with the tried-and-true three act structure, which is unsurprising since that’s easily the dominant model of storytelling in the English-speaking world.
I remember finding Plot & Structure a little surface-level when I read it close to 20 years ago. At that point I’d just finished my first degree and had been writing for a very long time, and it felt like beginner stuff. Which, realistically, it is (although I haven’t revisited it since then, so maybe I’m being uncharitable). Super Structure feels much more useful.
The main thrust of Super Structure is about making structure - specifically the three act structure - work for you. Rather than saying “these are the elements of the story you absolutely have to include, and this is the point in the book in which you must include it” (an approach screenwriting books like Save The Cat take, with their beat sheets that you’re encouraged to follow very closely) he instead treats these beats as good things to have, and as landmarks in the wider journey that is writing your manuscript. They’re scenes to aim for as you write so that you know where you’re going, or things to reach for and include if you find yourself at an impasse.
Bell breaks the three act structure into these constituent parts:
Act 1
Disturbance
Care Package
Argument against Transformation
Trouble Brewing
Doorway of No Return #1
Act 2: First Half
Kick In The Shins
The Mirror Moment
Pet The Dog
Act 2: Second Half
Mounting Forces
Doorway of No Return #2
Act 3: The Resolution
Lights Out
Q Factor
Final Battle
Transformation
Of these beats, he tells us that we only actually need five of them: Disturbance, Doorway of No Return #1, The Mirror Moment, Doorway of No Return #2, Final Battle. I vaguely remember his “doorway” language for the points of no return at the end of Acts 1 and 2 from Plot & Structure, and I think it’s clear that this book is really building on the material in that one.
The part of this that I’m most interested in is the “Mirror Moment”, which when seeing it I initially thought must be his term for what other people refer to as the “dark night of the soul”. This is the moment that comes at roughly the haflway mark of the book when the protagonist thinks themself to be completely lost. They’re at their lowest point, and the way they choose to pull themselves up from it tells us a lot about how the rest of the book is going to go.
That’s sort of what this is, but Bell expands on it. This is the point where the hero is confronted with a difficult truth - they either need to change, or they’re going to die. ‘Die’ here doesn’t mean literally die: he opens the book by telling us that all novels are about some form of death, be it physical, psychological, or professional. That’s what he’s referring to here.
Before I started on this quest to learn more about outlining and structure I happned to be reading Donald Maass’ The Emotional Craft of Fiction. He also talks about the “mirror moment” as being a moment of significant emotional weight in the novel, the moment where we find out who the protagonist really is and what sort of book we’re reading. It’s the tipping point between the beginning of the book and the ending, where everything hangs in the balance for one brief moment. Interestingly he refers directly to Bell’s Super Structure in his book.
Bell and Maass both advocate for building your entire novel around the Mirror Moment, and Bell wrote another book about that exact idea (Write Your Novel From The Middle). In all my years of trying to write novels it’s always been the question of “what actually happens in Act 2?” that’s stumped me the most and tripped me up when I’ve been making good progress, so I think rather than moving on to Story Engineering or revisiting Plot & Structure after finishing Super Structure I may instead pick up Write Your Novel From The Middle and see how Bell puts this into practice.
One more thought after yesterday’s reading. I’m keeping this journal because that’s part of the process in Write Better Faster, but interestingly Maass also talks about journalling in The Emotional Craft of Fiction. It’s only a tiny section, where he talks about Sue Grafton’s habit of journalling for 5 minutes before each writing session and asking herself questions about the book and what she’s about to write, but it’s interesting that this has come up twice. So I’m going to embrace this. I’m going to journal for 5 minutes before each session once I start the work of writing the book, and then I’ll journal after it as suggested by Monica Leonelle.
Let’s see how that goes.